Mumia: The New History Of Human Remains As Drugs.

In their hunt for higher ways that of the natural process of the flesh, healers throughout history have tried some unconventional and, by trendy standards, typically heavy and unethical means that of coping with sickness. one among the foremost unsettling is that the observe of prescribing mummy powder — for health. 

At present, as we have a tendency to hunt for pathways to eudaemonia that suit our desires and lifestyles, we frequently encounter practices that appear unconventional at the best and downright dangerous at the worst. From the false yoni eggs to the supposed nostrum drug that was prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as probably life-threatening many alleged eudaemonia merchandises find yourself raising eyebrows, and with a smart cause.

And if 21st-century “wellness” territory will typically prove weird or perhaps unsettling, it's no surprise that medical practices of many years past square measure strange to navigate. Trepanation, drilling into the os to alleviate cephalalgia or “release demons,” was a crude precursor to trendy operation.

But the twilight of medical aid options some even a lot of chilling practices. one among these is ingesting Mumia, mummy powder, or alternative human remains for the sake of health. In this Curiosities of medical record feature, we glance at once, how, and why healers thought that prescribing mummy powder would be a decent plan.   

A ligament of carcasses’

The observation of prescribing human remains or their byproducts for healing goes back many years. In a chapter on the healthful pattern in Early English Literature and Culture, Louise Noble, a senior lecturer at the University of latest England, in Armidale, Australia, points out that a number of medicine’s most vital forebears, anatomist, and doc, advocated the healthful use of human remains.

Galen, a Roman medico and thinker WHO lived within the second century, “admits the curative result on brain disorder ANd inflammatory disease of an elixir of burned human bones,” Noble writes.

And doc, a Swiss intellect and medico WHO lived from 1493–1541, “observes that the noblest drugs for man is man’s body and promotes the healthful power of mummy, human blood, fat, marrow, dung, and bone within the treatment of the many ailments,” she adds.

Between a minimum of the twelfth and therefore the seventeenth centuries — and well into the eighteenth century, in keeping with Noble — Mumia was widely used as a drug in European countries.

But what was Mumia, or “mummy,” in the medical formulation of the time? In early medical writing from the centre East, the word, or rather its variant, Mamiya, remarked a natural asphalt. However, in time, it took on a collection of various meanings for the thinkers and physicians of Europe.